Theater Shooting Spree a Tragedy

As an Internet comedy writer, it’s my job to be funny. Unfortunately, I just can’t do that this week because some … not gonna mince words here … jerk shot and killed at least a dozen people and wounded even more at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises last week.

It’s a tragedy, which means that some topics are not appropriate to discuss, like gun control. And they won’t be appropriate to talk about again until the next shooting spree, which means they’ll be in poor taste again.

You see, it’s time we stand up as a nation and rally around the real victims here: the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment activists. That’s right: it’s time for another non-joking meeting of the Rick Snee Antidisestablishmentarian Militia.

(The only jokes will be in the form of “RAMshots” from this month’s newsletter. Because, if we don’t laugh, we might actually examine our stance from a nuanced position in the wake of tragedy.)

Greetings, RAM members! It’s been awhile since we last met, mostly because I went on a two year vacation with my arsenal to all of the U.S. National Parks. The topic of this meeting is the Aurora, Colorado shooting and making sure nobody turns this into an argument for “common sense” gun control.

As everyone knows, guns don’t kill people. In fact, I’m not really sure what guns are for since I only collect them and occasionally take them out to shoot paper targets in the shape of famous Democrats. The point is that guns — all guns, even the automatics and semi-automatics that look best in a picture with Santa — are a right and a hobby. And, while it is heartbreaking when a few bad apples use these same weapons to kill a lot of people, that death toll is merely the dues we have to pay as a free society for my hobby.

Fortunately, our government only deals in platitudes, not results, so we should be able to continue to hold off any real discussion until we can finally explode tin cans with mind bullets.

No, the real tragedy in this is that, in an entire packed theater, not one of us was there to be a hero. We’ve been arguing for decades now that, with a better-armed society, armed citizens like ourselves would eventually stop mass killers like this, and we failed yet again. Columbine, Virginia Tech, the Gabrielle Giffords assassination attempt, last Friday — we continue to drop the ball over and over again, despite our promise to one day finally end gun violence once and for all with our guns.

So, once again, I’m asking all RAM members to pledge that they will stop the next shooter. If we don’t next time, people will start to wonder if anybody needs 100-round rifle magazines. Even us hobbyist-heroes.